How to Create a Computer Operating System

Operating systems allow users to interact with computer hardware, which is composed of hundreds of thousands of lines of commands. Usually written in C#, C, C++, and other assembly languages, operating systems allow for navigating the computer, creating memory, and executing instructions. Creating an operating system is not easy. You will need a lot of knowledge to do that.

Table of Contents

Steps

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Learn programming before you start. While assembly language is an essential language to learn, you should also learn another high-level backend language, such as C.

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Specify the media you want to use to upload the operating system. It could be a CD drive, DVD drive, USB drive, hard drive, or another computer.

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Identify the main idea for the operating system. For example, with Windows, it’s a user-friendly interface and security features.

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Determine which processing platforms your operating system will support. As the most popular platform for personal computers, perhaps IA-32, ARM and x86_64 will be your best choices.

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Determine to do it all from scratch or build on some existing OS kernel. For example, for those who want to completely build their own Linux distribution, Linux is not a bad choice.

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Determine whether to use a native bootloader or an existing one, such as Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB). Writing your own bootloader requires in-depth knowledge of the hardware as well as the BIOS and will likely put you back from planning the actual kernel programming.

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Determine the programming language you intend to use. Even though you can write your operating system in a language like Pascal or BASIC, you should still use C or Assembly language. Assembly language is indispensable, because some important parts of the operating system need this language. On the other hand, C++’s keyword needs to be run on another mature operating system.

To program an operating system from C or C++, of course you will have to use some compiler. Therefore, you should read the documentation/user manual for the C/C++ compiler of your choice, whether it is bundled with the software or provided on the distributor’s website. You will have to understand many compiler intricacies. With C++, you should know about the binary interface and mangling scheme of the compiler intended to use. You also need to understand the many possible formats (ELF, PE, COFF, plain binary, etc.) as well as be aware that Windows-specific formats are copyrighted.

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Define the application programming interface (API) to use. With rich resources, POSIX is a pretty good choice for you. Every Unix system more or less supports POSIX. So, converting Unix programs to the operating system will not be too difficult.

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Design shaping. Operating system kernels come in two forms: monolithic and microkernel. The monolithic kernel executes all services on the kernel while the microkernel cooperates with the user daemon to execute the services. In general, monolithic kernels are faster but microkernels are more reliable and isolate errors better.

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Consider teaming up to work. That way, you can save time in solving many problems, building a better operating system in less time.

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Do not completely erase the hard drive. By doing so, all your data will no longer be recoverable. Instead, use GRUB or another boot manager to dual-boot with another OS until your new OS is up and running.

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Start with small steps. Start with small steps, such as text rendering and paragraph breaks, before moving on to more complex tasks like memory management and multitasking functions. You can also try your hand at a simple 16-bit operating system first.

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Back up your last work, in case there is a serious problem with the current version of your operating system or your programming. It will help you work and troubleshoot when your computer is damaged and cannot be started.

If you need to store backups, make sure there are 2-3 partitions on the hard drive. One operating system is used to build another, one backs up the old version (older rather than the oldest) and one partition for the current version.

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Consider trying out a new operating system using a virtual desktop. Instead of restarting the computer every time you modify or transfer files from the programming computer to the test machine, you can use a virtual desktop application to run the operating system while the current operating system is still active. These could be VMWare (which also offers free server products), open source alternatives, Bochs, Microsoft Virtual PC (not compatible with Linux), Quemu (for linux and windows) and Oracle VirtualBox.

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Launch of “RC” trial version. Thereby, you will collect users’ opinions on potential problems as well as their evaluation of your operating system.

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The operating system can be user-friendly. Therefore, don’t forget to add user-friendly features, making them an integral part of your design.

Advice

Check, find potential deadlock errors and other errors. Errors, deadlocks and other problems will affect your operating system.
For the operating system to survive, don’t forget to make security your top priority.
Consult sites like OSDev and OSDever to develop your own operating system. Also, note that in most cases, the OSDev.org community encourages you to use their wiki instead of participating in the forum. If you still want to participate in the forum, you must meet the prerequisites: Proficient in C or C++ and x86 assembly language. In addition, you must understand general as well as complex programming concepts, such as Linked Lists, Queues etc. In their policy, the OSDev community makes it very clear that they are not there to guide the developers. new programmer.
Don’t join the OSDev.org forum and start asking questions where the answers are obvious. The answer would be “Read the manual” . You should read Wikipedia and the documentation for the tools you want to use.
When you want to develop an operating system, you must be an “expert” in programming .
You must also read the documentation for the processor architecture of your choice, regardless of whether it is x86 (Intel), ARM, MIPS, PPC, or any other architecture. You can find this document using the Google search engine (Keywords “Intel Manuals”, “ARM manuals”,…).
Once the build is complete, you need to consider whether to release the operating system as open source or closed source.
Don’t start this project to start learning programming. If you don’t understand well from pointer manipulation, low-level bit manipulation, bit conversion, embedded assembly to more complex processing in C, C++, Pascal, or some other suitable language, you’re not ready for the test. operating system development.
Maybe you should create a whole new partition for ‘development’ of the operating system.
If you want to keep it simple, you can consider using Linux distributions like Fedora Revisor, Custom Nimble X, Puppy Remaster, PCLinuxOS Mk LiveCD, or SUSE Studio and SUSE KIWI. However, the operating system you create will belong to the company that first started the service (you have the right to freely distribute, adapt, and run this operating system but under the GPL General Public license).

Warning

By doing foolish things, like writing random bytes to random I/O ports, you’ll crash the operating system and sometimes (in theory) even “boil” the hardware.
You won’t be able to complete the operating system in just two weeks. Let’s start with the bootable operating system and then move on to the cooler features.
Be careful. Carelessly writing an operating system for your hardware can completely destroy your hardware.
Don’t think that building a proper operating system is meant to be easy. There are countless complex and tangled relationships. For example, in order for the operating system to handle multiple processors, your memory manager must “lock” the device so that these processors do not access the same resources at the same time. The “lock” used for this purpose requires a scheduler to ensure that only one processor accesses a critical resource at any given time and all other processors are scheduled to wait. However, this scheduler needs a memory manager. This is a deadlock case. There is no standard way to deal with such problems: Operating system developers need to be skilled enough to find their own way.

Additional resources

Documentation: Linux From Scratch
Bootloader: GRUB
Virtual desktop applications: Bochs, VM Ware, XM Virtual Box.
Processor Manuals: Intel manuals
Website for operating system development: OSDev, OSDever

Things you need

Computer
CPU for the texture that you will develop
Enough memory (RAM) for the virtual computer
A ‘host’ operating system (used to develop assembler (and other) source code and build and package them in the early stages: ultimately, your own OS will be the host system )
Code editor with different colors for different terms (in case there is no integrated development environment)
Compiler
CD/DVD drive

Steps

Advice

Warning

Additional resources

Things you need

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